P R 

aS99 



r^^^ 



'TV 



i-x^-:' 






''M--tf^ 



'^^ ^ ^ 
"-.^^J . 



^«r>^'"'-' 



^"f 



%> .**^ 



V -• 






^Jll- 



»,-i 






■<^.:^ 



'^'3^ 









s«se^£5 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 




UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



A FEW FKAGMENTARY THOUGHTS 

ABOUT 

SHAKESPEARE. 



A PAPER READ BEFORE THE ERDINGTON LITERARY 
ASSOCIATION. 



/ 



By JAMES TURNER, 

A Membek of the Birmingham Shakespeare Reading Club. 



Love in idleness." 

A Midsummer Night's Bream. 






^■■^Hslm^h 




PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION. 



BIRMINGHAM: 
PRINTED BY JOSIAH ALLEN, 74, SUFFOLK STREET. 



MDCCCLXXXII. 



A FEW FRAGMENTARY THOUGHTS 

ABOUT 

SHAKESPEARE. 



Shakespeare says — " To business that we love we rise betimes^ 
and go to it witli delight/' It has been remarked by a brother 
member that this being a work of love on my part, the night 
should be a red-letter one. I think, my friend has mistaken 
the issue, which lies not in the love but in the ability ; if my 
ability were equal to my love it might be as he is kind enough 
to intimate, but I feel almost afraid to say anything about this 
truly great man, of whom so much has been said, and about 
whom I can say so little. I feel, as Hamlet says, 

" A dull and muddy -mettled rascal, peak 
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause ; 
And can say nothing, no, not for a king." 

This king of poets — this prophet of the people — ^he is so 
full of everything : full of beauty, full of instruction, full of 
humour, full of love, full of philosophy, full of poetry, full of 
wisdom and truth, that whatever we are able to bring to the 
surface to-night will be but a small sample of that mine of 
wealth we shall leave untouched; and the few poor words I 
may be able to utter must necessarily be 

" As petty to his ends 
As is the morn-dew on myrtle leaf 
To his grand sea." 

" Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have 
greatness thrust upon them.''' I consider that an honour has 
been thrust upon me in being asked to say a few words about 
this many-sided man. His own words about that wild and 
wicked youth, who afterwards became so good a king in 
Hemy V, will partially describe himself : 



" Hear him but reason in divinity, 
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish 
You would desire the king were made a prelate : 
Hear him debate of commonwealth affairs, 
Tou would say — it hath been all-in-all his study : 
List his discourse of war, and you shall hear 
A fearful battle rendered you in music : 
Turn him to any cause of policy, 
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose, 
Familiar as his garter ; that, when he speaks, 
The air, a charter'd libertine, is still. 
And the mute wonder lurketh in men's ears. 
To steal his sweet and honey'd sentences." 

And truly there is a ring in liis wordsj and music in the 
lineS; wliich take possession of our senses even befoi^e we under- 
stand his meaning. He is so universal in his knowledge that 
he has been claimed by nearly all trades and professions : his 
knowledge of gardenings of medicine^ of building is remark- 
able ; his law phrases are so frequent, and betray such a technical 
knowledge, that many have thought he must have spent some 
part of his time in a solicitor's office ; while his perfect know- 
ledge of human nature and of all sorts of people is simply 
wonderful. There are upwards of a thousand characters in his 
plays, the majority having a distinct individuality, ranging 
from the thick-headed constable Goodman Dull — who, on being 
reminded in company that he had not spoken a word all the 
while, replied, "Nor understood none neither" — to the philoso- 
phical Hamlet who understood a deal of this world and seemed 
to look into the next — from Audrey, the country girl and shep- 
herdess, who said she did not know what poetical was — to Juliet, 
who is poetry itself; from Caliban, half man, half monster, to 
" My dainty Ariel." 

" We are familiar at first." — Cymheline. 

We all know more about him than we think we do ; like 
the Bourgeoise Gentilhomme of Moliere, who found he had 
been talking prose all his life, and didn't know it, so we quote 
Shakespeare all our lives without knowing it, his words are so 



woven into our daily talk. I will read a few familiar sayings 
culled from his works : 

A little pot soon hot. — Make a virtue of necessity. — Misery acquaints 
a man with strange bedfellows. — The empty vessel makes the greatest 
sound. — Ill-will never said well. — A fool's bolt is soon shot. — Hold fast is 
the only dog. — Tell truth and shame the devil. — It is a good divine that 
follows his own instruction. — Hanging and wiving go by destiny. — 
Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep. — A staff is quickly 
found to beat a dog. — 111 blows the wind that profits nobody. — A light 
heart lives long. — There's a time for all things. — The fool thinks he is 
wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. — There is divinity in 
odd numbers. — When the age is in the wit is out.— All that glisters is 
not gold. — Brevity is the soul of wit. — They laugh that win. — A dog's 
obeyed in office. — The night is long that never finds the day. — Pride 
must have a fall. — The better part of valour is discretion. — Give the devil 
his due. — Great weeds do grow apace. — Few words to fair faith. 



" Speak of me as I am ; nothing extenuate, 
Nor set down aught in malice." — Othello. 

The very few facts regarding liis life may be briefly stated : 
born at Stratford- on- Avon in April^ 1564^ his father seems to 
have been a substantial tradesman of the town where he was, 
first, high bailiff, and afterwards alderman. Our poet was sent 
to Stratford Grammar School, and nothing more is known of 
him until he married, before he was nineteen years old, Ann 
Hathaway, the daughter of a well-to-do yeoman at Stratford, a 
woman eight years his senior. There was a little hurry about 
it ; he was married after the publication of the banns once only, 
by permission — that is known for certain, because there was 
a bond entered into by Fulk Sandells and John Eychardson 
for the indemnity of the ofl&cers of the Oonsistorial Court of 
Worcester in granting that permission, dated the 28th of 
November, 1582, and the marriage is supposed to have taken 
place about Christmas. His first child, Susanna, was born in 
May of the year following, and in 1585 his wife presented him 
with twins — Hamnet and Judith — so that before he had reached 
his twenty-first year he had begun the responsibilities of house- 
keeping in earnest. It is conjectured that he, like many others, 
married in haste and repented at leisure, that this unequal 



6 

match was not very productive of happiness; and his own 

words are quoted from A Midsummer Night's Dream, where he 

speaks of love "misgraffed in respect of years :^^ also in Twelfth 

Night he says — 

" Let still the woman take 
An elder than herself; so wears she to him, 
So sways she level in her husband's heart." 
Again : 

" Then let thy love be younger than thyself, 
Or thy affections cannot hold the bent. 
For women are as roses ; whose fair flower. 
Being once displayed, doth fade that very hour." 

But there are many passages on the subject of marriage. If 
we open Henry VI, First Part, we read — 

" For what is wedlock forced but a hell. 
An age of discord, and continual strife ? 
Whereas the contrary bringeth forth bliss, 
And is a pattern of celestial peace." 

Or we might open Much Ado About Nothing, and read — 

" Wooing, wedding, and repenting, is a Scotch jig, a measure, and a 
cinque-pace : the first suit is hot and hasty, like a Scotch jig, and full as 
fantastical ; the wedding, mannerly-modest, as a measure full of state and 
ancientry ; and then comes repentance, and, with his bad legs, falls into 
the cinque-pace faster and faster, till he sink into his grave." 

Or, further still, we might say that that eai-ly work of his, 
Venus and Adonis, contained the account of his own courting 
experiences ; and, indeed, it has been remarked that most of 
Shakespeare's women, without any loss of modesty on their 
part, do half their own courting. He is, perhaps, no exception 
to the unhappy marriage- choices of poets and men of genius. 
But these extracts prove nothing ; though, when we see them, 
we cannot help thinking about them side by side with the facts 
of his life ; indeed, I have often thought that some sort of life 
of the poet might be written from his works, taking the known 
facts of his life and the work he was known to be engaged on 
at the time. For instance, in September of the year 1601 he 
lost his father, and in the following year his Hamlet is entered 
on the Stationers^ Register ; those references to the death of 



the late King^ in tlie conversation between the King^ Queen, 
and Hamlet, in the first act, are, I think, penned with the 
memory of his father^s death fresh upon him. 

Shortly after marriage he is said to have been engaged in a 
deer-stealing frolic, and went to London to avoid the vengeance 
of Sir Thomas Lucy; but it has never been proved. So whether 
he left Stratford on that account, or through pecuniary diffi- 
culties, or from a love of adventure, to indulge his taste for 
poetry and acting by adopting the profession of dramatist and 
actor, will perhaps never be known. All we know is, that he 
did go to London, that he did adopt those professions, and that 
he quickly pushed poverty back and rose to eminence. Halliwell 
says the birth of twins while he was struggling for a living in 
his native town, no doubt startled the young poet, and it would 
seem that a separation was mutually agreed upon. He is sup- 
posed to have lived the greater part of the year alone in London, 
and to have paid an annual visit to his wife and children at 
Stratford. Tradition says, that among the parts enacted by 
him are the Ghost in his own play of Hamlet, and that grand 
old-man character of Adam, the devoted servant, in his charm- 
ing little comedy of As You Like It. No doubt he acted well ; 
but he had a higher and nobler work to do, that of a writer ; 
and the time he must have spent in producing those bulky 
works of his would prevent him rising to eminence as an actor ; 
indeed, it is very improbable that he continued long an actor — 
only so long as was sufficient to give him the necessary know- 
ledge of the rules and requirements of the stage, as was the 
wise custom of the dramatists of his day. But the hidden fire 
was there. We have only to open those terrible tragedies of 
his — Macbeth, Othello, and Lear — to see the consuming intensity 
of the passions poured from the wounded spirits therein described 
so powerfully, which 

" would drown the stage with tears, 

And cleave the general ear with horrid speech ; 

Make mad the guilty, and appal the free." 

We have substantial proof that William Shakespeare was 
a good business man. He soon became a shareholder in the 



theatre lie went to — tlie Blackfriars — and also in the Globe 
theatre^ which was built in 1595^ when he was thirty-one years 
of age. He must have prospered there, for two years afterwards 
he purchased New Place, one of the best houses in his native 
town, also land in 1602, a large property in Stratford in 1605, 
besides a house in London three years before his death. He 
must have been appreciated in his own day, for we find his 
friends and fellow- dramatists getting jealous of him — his name 
being published to works not his own in order to sell them — he 
is styled William Shakespeare, gentleman; we find him growing 
rich, with Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Southampton for 
friends and patrons — the latter, to whom he dedicated those 
early works of his, Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, is said to 
have presented him at one time with a thousand pounds, a 
goodly sum in those days. Then there is his friend Ben Jonson, 
who survived him several years, speaks well of him, and in a 
poem he published in his praise calls him 

" My gentle Shakespeare, sweet swan of Avon. 

Soul of the age — 
The applause ! delight ! the wonder of our stage." 

And though he was too refined, too noble, too lofty to be well 
understood by them, he was preferred before many of his 
contemporaries ; they could not fail to see his natural freshness 
and cheerful humour ; even now he is Greek to the many. We 
must get into sympathy with him by reading him again and 
again before we can understand him ; then we discover a depth 
of meaning. 



" Nothing but curious pleasures." — Pericles. 

Among the cui'ious things in Shakespeare are words where 
he seems to have anticipated some discovery or scientific 
principle found out long after his death. In Julius Ccesar we 
find him showing his knowledge of the changes in the positions 
of the stars through the effect of the earth^s rotation. He says : 



9 

" I am constant as the Novtheru Star, 
Of whose ti'ue-fixed and resting quality 
There is no fellow in the firmament. 
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks, 
They are all fire, and every one doth shine ; 
But there's but one in all doth hold his place." 

Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, we open 
Coriolanus and find it described in the fable told by Menenius ; 
in the first scene the stomach is made to say: 

" But if you remember 
I send it through the rivers of your blood, 
Even to the coui-t the heart — to the seat o' the brain ; 
And through the cranks and offices of man 
The strongest nerves and most inferior veins." 

We lay telegraph cables round the globe — Puck, in A Mid- 
summer Night's Dream, says : " 1^11 put a girdle round about the 
earth in forty minutes.^' We talk of the development theory, 
and that patient seeker after truth (as revealed in the unfolding 
of nature^s laws), the late Dr. Darwin, whose thoughts were 
probably anticipated by the great master when he makes 
Holofernes, in Love's Labour Lost, speaking of Moth, say : 
"And when he was a child, a babe, a shrimp.'^ Then that 
very interesting and much sought after individual, the missing 
link, will be found in Shakespeare in the person of Cahban. 
Sir Isaac Newton unfolded the principle of gravitation, but the 
great poet mentioned the principle as applied to our earth long 
before Newton was born. He says in Troilus and Cressida : 

" Time, force, and death, 
Do to this body what extremes they can ; 
But the strong base and building of my love 
Is as the very centre of the earth, 
Drawing all things to it." 

Again, the fact of blood circulating is told in Borneo and 
Juliet, act v, scene 1 : 

" A dram of poison, such soon-spreading gear 
As will disperse itself through all the veins." 

Again, in Hamlet, act i, scene 5 : 



10 

" Whose effect 
Holds such an enmifcy with blood of man, 
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through 
The natural gates and alleys of the body." 

All may not know he has mentioned Sutton Coldfield in his 

works. Falstaff says to his lieutenant in the Second Part of 

Henry IV: 

"Bardolph, get thee before to Coventry; fill me a bottle of sack; 
our soldiers shall march through ; w'll to Sutton Co'fii' to-night." 

Indeed it is said that from the sylvan shades of Gum Slade, 
Sutton Park, Shakespeare drew his scenery for A Midsummer 
Night's Dream. 



" Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way 
Of starved people." — Merchant of Venice. 

The ladies should be especially fond of Shakespeare, for he 
seems especially fond of them ; he certainly has made them what 
we all think they are — the better part of humanity, the true 
conservatives of society. He, like most poets, has spoken a 
great deal of women and love ; indeed, he says himself : 



Also, 



" Never durst poet touch pen to write 
Until his ink were tempered with love's sighs." 

" From women's eyes this doctrine I derive. 
They are the ground, the books, the academies 
From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire." 



No doubt he drew inspiration largely from that source; he 
knew them so thoroughly he has not even spared their faults. 
He makes them superior to us in sensitiveness, delicacy of 
organization, and attributes faults to them springing out of 
those qualities such as love of novelty, wealth, dress, pre- 
eminence, sway, lack of judgment, influenced by the eye, 
incapacity for reasoning, impulsive, ruled by passion. He has 
drawn a Regan, a Groneril, a Cleopatra, a Lady Macbeth, but 
no man has presented to us more lovely models of female 
excellence or done more to make us admirers of Eve^s daughters. 
He has. elevated them to such a height of moral and physical 



1 1 

beauty that we feel their good influence in reading-. He has 
pictured some of the finest women that were ever drawn, raised 
to such an ideal of excellence, and withal so human, that it is a 
real pleasure to open the book and get into the company of 
Celia and Rosalind, Isabella or Beatrice, Olivia and Viola, 
Portia, Queen Catherine, or Cordelia, as we may desire the 
grave or the gay, the witty or the sober, the playful or sincere. 
His most Christian heroines are Cordelia and Imogen. 

Extract from Twelfth Night, a dialogue between Viola and 
the Duke. Viola is one of Shakespeare's women who does 
half her own courting, she is following the Duke in the capacity 
of a page under the name of Cesario : 

" Duhe. Once more, Cesario, 

Get thee to yon' same sovereign cruelty ; 
Tell her, my love, more noble than the world, 
Prizes not quantity of dirty lands : 
The parts that fortune hath bestowed upon her. 
Tell her, I hold as giddily as fortune ; 
But 't is that miracle, and queen of gems. 
That nature pranks her in, attracts my soul. 

Viola. But if she cannot love you, sir? 

Biike. I cannot be so answer'd. 

Viola. 'Sooth, but you must. 

Say, that some lady, as, perhaps, there is. 
Hath for your love as great a pang of heart 
As you have for Olivia; you cannot love her ; 
You tell her so; must she not then be answer'd .P 

Buhe. There is no woman's sides 
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion 
As love doth give my heart : no woman's heart 
So big, to hold so much; they lack retention. 
Alas, their love may be call'd appetite — 
No motion of the liver, but the palate — 
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt ; 
But mine is all as hungry as the sea. 
And can digest as much : make no compare 
Between that love a woman can bear me 
And that I owe Olivia. 

Viola. Ay, but I know — 

Diike. "What dost thou know ? 

Viola. Too well what love women to men may owe-; 
In faith, they are as true of heart as we.. 



12 

My father had a daughter lov'd a man, 
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman 
I should your lordship. 

DuTce. And what's her history ? 

Viola. A blank, my lord : she never told her love. 
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud. 
Feed on her damask cheek : she pin'd in thought ; 
And, with a green and yellow melancholy. 
She sat, like patience on a monument. 
Smiling at grief. Was not this love, indeed? 
We men may say more, swear more ; but, indeed, 
Our shows are more than will ; for still we prove 
Much in our vows, but little in our love." 



" Love all, trust a few. 
Do wrong to none ; be able for thine enemy 
Rather in power than use ; and keep thy friend 
Under thine own life's key." — All's Well That Ends Well. 

His moral and religious teaching is undeniable^ and un- 
doubtedly many passages are built on the Bible^ which is no 
wonder^ seeing that it was the class book of his school days, 
and such a sincere student of it he must have been that I could 
spend the evening quoting parallel passages from both books, 
not to prove he was a moral writer, that proof lies in the 
acceptance of his works as a whole ; in their tendency on the 
reader; in the pure loves and friendships he has depicted; in the 
noble manly bearing of his matchless men and women; and 
while depicting the changing scenes of human life, and all the 
shades in the various workings of the human mind, he is 
always calling our attention to the Creator of the universe ; and 
though in reading we get among all sorts of people — the 
vicious and the pure ; the wise and the foolish ; one being used 
in contrast with the other — he never holds up vice for imitation 
or scoffs at virtue ; he never leaves you in doubt of which way 
his sympathy lies ; a deep feeling of religion runs through all 
his works; their tendency and effect on the reader is always for 
good ; and despite his many peculiarities and occasional coarse- 
ness, there are no writings which more deeply impress the 
reader with a profound moral intention. 



13 

It would be easy in illustration to cull a number of sayings 
containing moral maxims, isolated and independent passages, 
the bearing of whicli the most obtuse could not fail to see, but 
that would be away from my purpose, seeing that I rather 
regard the works of Shakespeare in moral intention as one har- 
monious whole ; however I will quote a few connected extracts 
from Macbeth, which shew the evil power of that master-sin of 
the human race — ambition. That play — so full of beautiful 
language, so direct in its action and effect on the mind, so 
powerfully terrible and yet so beautifully poetic — is justly said 
to be the finest sermon on wrong doing ever written. 

ACT I. SCENE YII. A Boom in the Castle. Enter Macbeth. 

" Macb. If it were done, when 't is done, then 't were well 
It were done quickly : If the assassination 
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
With his surcease, success ; that but this blow 
Might be the be-all and the end-all, here. 
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 
"We 'd jump the life to come. — But in these cases, 
We still have judgment here ; that we but teach 
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
To plague the inventor : This even-handed justice 
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice 
To our own lips. He 's here in double trust : 
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject. 
Strong both against the deed: then, as his host. 
Who should against his murtherer shut the door, 
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan 
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking-ofF: 
And pity, like a naked new-born babe. 
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd 
Upon the sightless couriers of the air. 
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye. 
That tears shall drown the wind. — I have no spur 
To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself. 
And falls on the other — How now, what news ? 
Enter Lady Macbeth. 

Lady M. He has almost supp'd : why have you left the chamber ? 



14 

Macb. Hath he aslced for me ? 

Lady M. Know you not he has ? 

Macb. We will proceed no further in this business : 
He hath honour'd me of late ; and I have bought 
Golden opinions from all sorts of people, 
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, 
Not cast aside so soon. 

Lady M. Was the hope drunk, 

Wherein you dressed yourself ? hath it slept since ? 
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale 
At what it did so freely ? From this time. 
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard 
To be the same in thine own act and valour. 
As thou art in desire ? Wouldst thou have that 
Which thou esteem' st the ornament of life. 
And live a coward in thine own esteera ; 
Letting I dare not wait upon I would, 
Like the poor cat i' the adage ? 

Macb. Prithee, peace: 

I dare do all that may become a man ; 
Who dares do more, is none. 

Lady M. What beast was 't then. 

That made you break this enterprise to me ? 
When you durst do it, then you were a man ; 
And, to be more than what you were, you would 
Be so much more the man. ISTor time, nor place. 
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both : 
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now 
Does unmake you. I have given suck ; and know 
How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me : 
I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums. 
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn. 
As you have done to this. 

Macb. If we should fail, 

Lady M. We fail. 

But screw your courage to the sticking place. 
And we '11 not fail." 



We will now go to the scene of the crime. We will suppose 
it past midnight^ the king and courtiers have retired to rest 
after a sumptuous feast and a liberal supply of wine. Macbeth 
has already crept to the chamber of the king. Lady Macbeth 
comes on the scene^ and taking in the situation at a glance^ says: 



15 

Lady M. That wliicli liatli made them drunk hath made me bold: 
What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. 
Hark ! Peace ! It was the owl that shriek' d, 
The fatal bellman which gives the stern'st good night. 
He is about it : The doors are open ; 

And the surfeited grooms do mock their charge with snores : 
I have drugged their possets, 
That death and nature do contend about them, 
Whether they live, or die. 

Macb. IWithin.'] Who's there .P — what, hoa! 

Lady M. Alack ! I am afraid, they have awak'd. 
And 't is not done : — the attempt, and not the deed, 
Confounds us : — Hark ! — I laid their daggers ready, 
He could not miss them. — Had he not resembled 
My father as he slept I had done 't — My husband ! 

Enter Macbeth. 

Macb. I have done the deed : — Didst thou not hear a noise? 

Lady M. I heard the owl scream, and the crickets cry. 
Did not you speak ? 

Macb. When ? 

Lady M. Now. 

Macb. As I descended ? 

Lady M. Ay. 

Macb. Hark ! 
Who lies i' the second chamber ? 

Lady M. Donalbain. 

Macb. This is a sorry sight. \_LooMng on Ms hands. 

Lady M. A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. 

Macb. There 's one did laugh in his sleep, 
And one cried ' murther ! ' that they did wake each other; 
I stood and heard them : but they did say their prayers. 
And address'd them again to sleep. 

Lady M. There are two lodg'd together. 

Macb. One cried, ' God bless us ! ' and 'Amen,' the other; 
As they had seen me with these hangman's hands. 
Listening their fear, I could not say, amen, 
When they did say, God bless us. 

Lady M. Consider it not so deeply. 

Macb. But wherefore could not I pronounce, amen ? 
I had most need of blessing, and amen 
Stuck in my throat. 

Lady M. These deeds must not be thought 

After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 

Macb. Methought, I heard a voice cry, ' Sleep no more ! 
Macbeth does murther sleep, the innocent sleep ; 



16 

Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of cave, 
The death of each day's hfe, sore labour's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast.' 

Lady M. What do you mean ? 

Macb. Still it cried, ' Sleep no more ! ' to all the house : 
' Glamis hath murther'd sleep : and therefore Cawdor 
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more ! ' 

Lady M. Who was it that thus cried ? Why, worthy thane, 
You do unbend your noble strength, to think 
So brainsickly of things : — Go, get some water. 

And wash this filthy witness from your hand. — ' 

Why did you bring these daggers from the place ? 
They must lie there : Go, carry them ; and smear 
The sleepy grooms with blood. 

Mach. I '11 go no more : 

I am afraid to think what I have done ; 
Look on 't again I dare not. 

Lady M. Infirm of purpose ! 

Give me the daggers : The sleeping, and the dead. 
Are but as pictures ; 't is the eye of childhood 
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, 
I '11 gild the faces of the grooms withal, 
For it must seem their guilt. \_Exit. Knocldng within. 

Macb. Whence is that knocking ? 

How is 't with me, when every noise appals me ? 
What hands are here ? Ha ! they pluck out mine eyes ! 
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hand ? No ; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green — one red. 

Be-enter Lady Macbeth. 

Lady M. My hands are of your colour ; but I shame 
To wear a heart so white. [^Knoclc.'] I hear a knocking 
At the south entry : — retire we to our chamber : 
A little water clears us of this deed : 
How easy is it then ! Your constancy 

Hath left you unattended. — \_KnocMng.'] Hark ! more knocking : 
Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, 
And show us to be watchers : — Be not lost 
So poorly in your thoughts. 

Macb. To know my deed, 't were best not know myself. {_Knoch. 
Wake Duncan with thy knocking ; I would thou couldst ! lExeunt." 

Lady Macbetli fares no better,, the remembrance of this scene 



17 

preys upon her mind; she loses ber reason and walks in her 

sleep. 

ACT Y. SCENE I.— Dunsinane. A Boom in the Castle. 

Enter a Doctor of Physic, and a waiting Gentlewoman. 

" Boct. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth 
in your report. When was it she last walked ? 

Gent. Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from 
her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth 
paper, fold it, write upon 't, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return 
t^ bed ; yet all this while in a most fast sleep. 

Boct. A great perturbation in nature ! to receive at once the benefit of 
sleep, and do the efi'ecbs of watching. — In this slumbery agitation, besides 
her walking and other actual performances, what, at any time, have you 
heard her say ? 

Gent. That, sir, which I will not report after her. 

Doct. You may, to me ; and 't is most meet you should. 

Gent. Neither to you, nor any one; having no witnesses to confirm 
my speech. 

Enter Lady Macbeth, with a taper. 

Lo you, here she comes ! This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast 
asleep. Observe her : stand close. 

Doct. How came she by that light ? 

Gent. Why, it stood by her : she has light by her continually ; 't is her 
command. 

Boct. You see, her eyes are open. 

Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut. 

Boct. What is it she does now ? Look how she rubs her hands. 

Gent. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her 
hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. 

Lady M. Yet here's a spot. 

Boct. Hark, she speaks : I will set down what comes from her, to 
satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. 

Lady M. Out, damned spot ! out, I say ! — One ; Two : Why, then 't is 
time to 't : — Hell is murky ! — Fie, my lord, fie ! a soldier, and afeard ? 
What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to 
account ? — Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much 
blood in him ! 

Boct. Do you mark that ? 

Lady M. The Thane of Fife had a wife ; where is she now ? — What, 
will these hands ne'er be clean ?— No more o' that, my lord, no more o' 
that : you mar all with this starting. 

Boct. Go to, go to ; you have known what you should not. 

Geoit. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that : Heaven 
knows what she has known. 



18 

Lady M. Here's the smell of the blood still : all the perfumes of Arabia 
will not sweeten this little hand. Oh ! oh ! oh ! 

Dod. What a sigh is there ! The heart is sorely charged. 

Gent. I would not have such a heart in my bosom, for the dignity of 
the whole body. 

Doct. "Well, well, well, — 

Gent. 'Pray God, it be, sir. 

Doct. This disease is beyond my practice : Yet I have known those 
which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds. 

Lady M. Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so 
pale : — I tell you yet again, Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on 's grave. 

Doct. Even so ? 

Lady M. To bed, to bed; there's knocking at the gate. Come, come, 
come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone; To 
bed, to bed, to bed. [Exit Lady Macbeth. 

Doct. Will she go now to bed ? 

Gent. Directly. 

Loot. Foul whisperings are abroad : Unnatural deeds 
Do breed unnatural troubles : Infected minds 
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. 
More needs she the divine than the physician. 
God, God, forgive us all ! " 



" But, look ! the morn in russet mantle clad, 
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill." — Hamlet. 

What a serenely calm eye he had for all God^s handiwork, 
whether it be the placid face of nature or the storm_, the little 
flower, the running brook or the flying bird, the creeping 
snake or the bounding lion, a touch of his pen and they spring 
into seeming life and activity ; and how he turns everything to 
good, truly he puts "tongues in trees, books in the running 
brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.-'^ If you feel 
fretted and worn, ill-tempered or sad, if you wish to scent the 
sweet leaves of a forest, to walk on a carpet of turf, to lose 
yourself in romantic glens and glades, to hear the murmuring 
brook and the merry carol of the birds, to feel free from all 
worldly care and breathe the free fresh air of heaven, read his 
charming little comedy of As You Like It; there we walk 
through the woods with Jaques, and stretch ourselves in the 
sunshine on the bank beside the brook, listening to his 
philosophy or looking at the fantastic clouds floating over 



19 

grove and forest, meadow and mountain, reflecting their beauty 
and their brightness in the stream below ; then more company 
comes and we chat with the saucy Rosalind, and feel inclined 
to crack jokes with Touchstone, the clown — how refreshing it 
is to the mind to keep their company and listen to their talk. 
Or, would you rather tread the streets and gardens of a con- 
tinental town where the sky is blue, the climate warm, the 
costumes picturesque, and manners free ; where the houses look 
quaint, the gables fantastic, where ^Hhe little wide mouthed 
heads upon the spout have cunning eyes " and stare upon you 
as you pass, read that little gem Twelfth Night, and if yog; 
find no enjoyment in the grand and pleasant picture of human 
life found in the two comedies I have mentioned then I must, 
say fare thee well. 



" There is a history in all men's lives, 
Figuring the nature of the times deceas'd." 

Second Fart of Henry IV. 

We gain no mean knowledge of our own history in reading 
those historical plays of his — Richard II, King John, Henry IV, 
V, and VI, Richard III, and Henry VIII, or of Roman history 
from his Julius, Coriolanus, and Antony and Cleopatra. What 
a correct idea we get of the times ; true, he does not always 
keep strict to dates, and often pushes two or three events 
together that lie wide apart, but we get something of more 
value — a distinct view of the men and women who lived. He 
seems to stir up the dull pages of history, to put blood into 
the old fossil dates, and make the events dance before our eyes 
in such a manner that we never forget them — dramatist, histo- 
rian, and poet in one. What a fine picture we get of the cow- 
ardly, vacillating King John, his boldness, his fear, his cringing, 
his cunning, his cruelty. What a picture of the Pope and his 
power, of Constance and Arthur, and more wonderful still, in 
the midst of the preparation, bustle, and confusion of events 
there portrayed, what beautiful language he puts into the 
mouths of the actors, instance those well-known lines given to 
Salisbury, which will show the vanity of my position to-night : 



20 

" To guard a title that was rich before, 
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
To throw a perfume on the violet, 
To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish. 
Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess." 

Shakespeare lived in a glorious age — an heroic age — a 
practical age ; the people were all alive ; the invincible Spanish 
Armada had been beaten back ; a spirit of emulation possessed 
the people; England was growing rich and powerful; our 
great and popular Queen was on the throne, surrounded by all 
the learning of the land — travellers were abroad — rich countries 
discovered ; Sir Francis Drake was on the sea ; Shakespeare 
had seen Queen Elizabeth, Sir Walter Ealeigh, Lord Bacon, 
Hawkins, and other eminent men and nobles; he had seen 
the pomp and parade of the Court, its shows and pastimes, 
perhaps the Queen^s visit to Kenilworth and to other places, 
and the popular enthusiasm of those stirrings restless times he 
has stamped in his plays — most of his men and women could 
have lived in the reign of Elizabeth. Part of that description 
of the state of England in the reign of Henry V (from the 
Chorus of that play) could be applied with equal truth to the 
times in which he lived : 

" Now all the youth of England are on fire. 
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies ; 
Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought 
Reigns solely in the breast of every man : 
They sell the pasture now, to buy the horse ; 
Following the mirror of all Christian kings, 
"With winged heels, as English Mercuries. 
For now sits Expectation in the air ; 
And hides a sword, from hilts unto the point, 
With crowns imperial." 

He, being so keen an observer, no doubt received many a 
hint from scenes happening around him; and when writing 
many of his court and street scenes, those of London have been 
naturally present to his eye ; and what a master of pictorial 
effect he is; all through the play of Henry V we have some 



21 

grand pictures^ beginning with tlie preparation for the invasion 
of France to his return home : we see the soldiers start from 
London amidst the well wishes of all England ; we see them set 
sail from Southampton ; we fancy we hear them on board 
cracking their broad jokes, while eating and drinking their 
coarse diet ; we follow them through the long and weary- 
marches through France, and see them tired and jaded, worn 
out by sickness and fatigue, sink upon the damp earth for rest 
and quietly await the welcome morning battle ; we read of 
Harfleur and Agincourt, and with the magic touch of his 
words the battle fields are again filled with combatants ; we 
hear the tramping and neighing of horse, the trumpets^ clang, 
and the roar of battle ; we see the air filled with arrows ; we 
hear the shouts of the victors, and see the retreating forms of 
the foe as they fly from the field stumbling over the bodies of 
the dead ; we read that fine paraphrase of the Hon nobis put 
into the mouth of the king : 

" God, thy arm was here ; 
And not to us, but to thy arm alone, 
Ascribe we all." 

Then we see the rejoicings ; and the soul-stirring strains of 
the martial music, the singing of the grand Te Beum is wafted 
into our imaginations as the glorious pageantry of by-gone days 
rises before our eyes ; the return home and the hearty welcome, 
forming a series of scenes at once interesting, enlivening, in- 
structive, and amusing ; we see all this and more, for we see as 
much between the lines as in the lines themselves, his descrip- 
tive power is so great ; he expresses so much in so little ; he 
understands the value of his words so well, and by their arrange- 
ment makes them so suggestive, that a host of thoughts come 
into the mind that we see not in the print ; and he is so full 
of meaning that every word must be weighed, every sentence 
looked at again and again. There was never author described 
in so few words ; there was never author used such a variety of 
words ; and there was never author who used his words in so 
many varied forms and meanings — so appropriate, so accurate, 
so forcible, so finished. What a crowd of images rush into the 



22 

mind in reading that short soliloquy of Henry the Fourth's on 
Sleep : nature's nurse — the smoky cribs of poverty with beds of 
straw — the luxuriant chambers of the great — the restless sea — 
— the fearful winds — the dreadful storms — the mizzen top and 
the wet sea-boy — the great strong ship^ the plaything of the 
mightier ocean; and in the whole a wretched, sleepless king, 
worn out by domestic trouble and civil war. ' 

" How many thousand of my poorest subjects 
Are at this hour asleep ! O sleep, O gentle sleep, 
Nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, 
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down, 
And steep my senses in forgetfulness ? 
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, 
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee. 
And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, 
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
Under the canopies of costly state. 
And luU'd with sounds of sweetest melody ? 
O, thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile. 
In loathsome beds ; and leavest the kingly couch, 
A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell ? 
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast 
Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains 
In cradle of the rude imperious surge ; 
And in the visitation of the winds. 
Who take the ruffian billows by the top. 
Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them 
With deafening clamours in the slippery clouds. 
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes ? 
Canst thou, O partial sleep ! give thy repose 
To the wet sea-boy, in an hour so rude ; 
And in the calmest and most stillest night, 
With all appliances and means to boot. 
Deny it to a king ? Then, happy low-lie-down ! 
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." 

How appropriate these words are in the mouth of this man — 
the unprincipled and ambitious Hereford — the once banished 
Bolingbroke — who was sent across the sea by Richard the 
Second — who had seen the poor sailor sleep in the storm and 
the ship-boy in the rigging. 



23 

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd : 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; 
Eaze out the written troubles of the brain ; 
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote. 
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff 
Which weighs upon the heart ? 

Therein the patient 
Must minister to himself." — Machetli. 

One great difference between him and many other poets is, 
you never find him raking up the sad memories of the past in 
order to sit down and brood over them in a sickly, sentimental 
way. I cannot find a single line where such use of memory is 
encouraged. He, like the American poet, Longfellow (just 
gone from among us), believed it best to "Let the dead past 
bury its dead.^' He is robust : even Hamlet, thinking of his 
mother, says, "Must I remember ?^^ as if it were against his 
wish. There is a healthy heartiness about him — through death 
and disaster nature looks gay, the sun shines, the birds sing, 
the lambs play, the trees bud, and he comes back to a cheerful- 
ness of humour, looking upwards with a gentle confiding spirit. 
He, like Jaques, is " so full of matter ^^ and so diverse that he is 
not only for all ages in time, but for all ages in man. In youth 
we find enthusiasm and fire in the verse. We read for the 
plots of the plays the beautiful stories, then for the language 
and instruction, afterwards for the philosophy and truth, and 
later we see the wondrous wisdom. Eead him how you like, 
seek him for pleasure only, and instead of a pastime we find a 
delight. He is the Bible of thousands in this little land of ours, 
he has been translated into nearly all languages, even into plain 
Tamil, one of the Indian dialects. Unlike multitudes of other 
writers, we grow in fondness as we read. Study him, and our 
reward will be to cultivate our minds, give us a wider know- 
ledge of human nature, and tend to enable us to distinguish 
between the honest and the subtle ; by it our minds are enriched, 
our thoughts made clearer, our affections purer ; we are enabled 
to perceive more clearly, discriminate more keenly, weigh 
evidence more wisely, and act with more kindness and charity 
to all. 



24 

In conclusion^ I would remind you that we are very near tlie 
SlSth birthday of this great man; a man who^ though dead, seems 
to march with us ; a man all through whose writings we find the 
silent finger, with a great moral intention, pointing to the flight 
of time, the uncertainty of this vain world, and the life beyond 
the grave; a man who is not yet thoroughly understood nor 
read so much as he ought to be, whose large loving heart still 
beats in his works, whose wise words fill the lines; and however 
we improve, or whatever we find out, we look in his book and 
seem to see ourselves anticipated in some sweetly turned 
sentence or loving thought. He seems rather to go before us, 
like the pillar of fire that led the Jews through the wilderness. 
He has marched through nearly three centuries with the people 
who lived through those times, their counsellor, their instructor, 
their fool, and their friend ; and three centuries hence he will 
still be found jostling shoulder to shoulder with the poets and 
wits then alive, who on opening his book will find that their 
little say has been said much better before. He will still be 
the centre round which all other lights revolve — still be march- 
ing on foremost in the procession, refusing to be left behind ; 
and though there may come a time when his book shall look 
old-fashioned and be found in a neglected corner of the shelf 
begrimed with dust, and men, women, and children may pass it 
by in forgetfulness, or if they should by chance open it, regard 
its characters with wonder and curiosity ; yet before that time 
comes the English language must first be dead, the English 
nation a thing of the past, the great Teutonic race and their 
families departed, the world must change hands — old things 
must pass away and all things become new. 

" The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And like this insubstantial pageant faded. 
Leave not a wreck behind. We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 



Printed by JOSIAH ALLEN, Birminghain. 



■^"^ 



J >J^ 




■■^..Jl^*' ' 



-i^^ 



